Posts by thejoelr

Decentralized IPFS networks forming the 'hotbed of phishing'

Re: Bit rich to blame ipfs

Yeah, I'm not very convinced this is really a problem. If your users already know how to not be hit by phishing, they aren't exposed to it. I guess it makes easy press.

Philippines logs on to Starlink for remote area internet services

Actual coverage.

At least initially, Starlink only has coverage over the northern area of the country. This helps some, but the largest need is farther south. The terminals themselves have a cost, but you also have to do an installation in a typhoon prone area with lots of trees. It has been good to watch how advancements in local networks has really accelerated after 2020, though.

Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected

The Philippines wage is not a living wage. No one qualified is going to accept that salary. Even call centers will pay more than that. The price of a US developer is a lot lower if you don't force them to live in places like the bay area. I think you can almost halve that if you hire in places where the cost of living isn't so outrageous.

Uber to pay millions to settle claims it ripped off disabled people with unfair fees

Re: Why is this legal anyway?

This is not the only lawsuit related to this, and they've done great stuff like argue they aren't a ride sharing service.

Even robots have the right to learn from open source

Huh?

Wow.

Anyway, the github license allows them to do what they want with things put there. Read your licenses before you use things.. especially if they're someone like Microsoft. My only question is if someone puts a repo there and isn't associated with the original work that lives elsewhere.

Anyway, for anyone harboring the delusion that github wasn't really Microsoft... now is the time to move off of github.

The App Gap and supply chains: Purism CEO on what's ahead for the Librem 5 USA

Re: 3GB a day huh?

I realize that they pass this information, but was there a real need to say it was 3GB? It is obviously untrue. The math on how much that is per hour/minute does not add up to anything close to reality. I expect people selling me technical products--especially security ones--to not be loose about such things for the sake of sales.

3GB a day huh?

I really hate it when companies push 'facts' that are obviously wrong. Anyone on a metered data plan is quickly going to notice 3GB a day, or 900GB a month of your data being sent back to Apple/Google. When the peddle such obvious lies in things I can quickly check it makes me question everything else they say. The tethering thing is easily avoided on Android phones, and it usually a violation of the TOS and can get your account suspended. They also talk up where the CPU is made, but a quick search shows the modem supplier is Broadmobi Shanghai. The facts are that with that price they have a tiny market when much cheaper alternatives exist.

Zero Trust: What does it actually mean – and why would you want it?

Re: Nomenclature

Exactly. If this is zero trust, it has been regular practice for a long time where I've worked. It does not resemble all the flashy products I've failed to understand...

Zendesk sold to private investors two weeks after saying it would stay public

The company resources.

Lenovo reveals small but mighty desktop workstation

Missing a market.

That nvidia card isn't that great. Intel seems unable to produce NUC extremes in any meaningful volume. If they let it use real GPUs they would sell a whole lot more of them. I think the segment of customers who need a GPU for work but only one this powerful is pretty small..

Amazon can't channel the dead, but its deepfake voices take a close second

Do not want.

Maybe if Bezos can read me bedtime stories, but I have no interest in dead relatives whispering me off to sleep. This is nightmare fuel.

There are 24.6 billion pairs of credentials for sale on dark web

Lots of ancient logins.

Last year I looked at a smaller data set that I'm sure this includes, and it was so much noise. I had a couple of hits in it, and they were a trip down memory lane. Dead sites from a decade ago. I did lookups for a few friends and they were all ancient changed passwords... not legitimate hits. Finding actual useful data in all of this noise would be extremely difficult. It sounds great based on the numbers, but in reality is not.

Consultant plays Metaverse MythBuster. Here's why they're wrong

Ohhh..... that is what the metaverse is.

Well now that I know the metaverse is Fortnite...

Big Tech begs Congress to pass $52bn chip subsidies bill

How do Taiwan and Korea handle it?

I see the article saying other countries do it, but it doesn't give an overview of what they actually do. Maybe they do it in ways that aren't just handing over billions in cash with no oversight or even minimal expectations of returns. Chips are a national security issue, shouldn't the government be very interested in their supply? Get in there and regulate and see how these companies feel about it.. I think China forcing government tech to use domestically produced parts is a very smart plan.

Coinbase CEO cuts 1,100 jobs, warns of 'crypto winter'

Quick to fire.

Lots of loyalty to employees I see. They massively overhired and are chucking 18% of their employees immediately when things look rough. So, did they not plan for this possibility, or do they just not care about the people? What other cuts are they making? Executive salaries? The actions of these companies make it clear what kind of people run them.

Intel delivers first discrete Arc desktop GPUs ... in China

True confidence in the product.

I do not believe they failed to secure production capacity for their GPU. They are Intel, not some small entity. They also haven't provided review units to anyone. They are intentionally making this hardware scarce.

I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well

Have you used a modern distro? Last time I used Ubuntu it was great at printing. Better than windows. It autodetects my network printer and just adds it...

New audio server Pipewire coming to next version of Ubuntu

Re: Another Sound Server

Except Ubuntu still uses X for Nvidia. I agree that they were right to skip pipewire for an LTS. It still has some issues.

Re: Will it finally fix the bluetooth HSP/HFP issue

In most distros, yes. The pulseaudio team have been rejecting patches to make it work for at least a year now. You can dig up the issues with discussion on their bug tracker. Switching to pipewire magically fixes this... It allows the bluez additions to work.

Google keeps legacy G Suite alive and free for personal use

And I develop more caution about Google products.

I am a paying customer of workspace for my company and where I work. The first decision put the task of migrating my personal stuff away on my long-term radar. Backing out at the last minute really bothers me more. Why can't they make a business decision and either immediately fix a mistake or stick to it? I trust them less at this point, and would not be against moving my work accounts elsewhere. When will google stop shooting itself in the foot...

DigitalOcean tries to take sting out of price hike with $4 VM

Poor execution of price hike.

I got the email yesterday and it really annoyed me that they refused to just show the price changes compared to old prices.. or even process my account and calculate the new prices. Sure, they are depending on me to be lazy and just accept the change, but I'm sort of motivated to dig deeper now. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm totally on there because of the low price for my personal projects and a reasonably close location for low lag. If they cleaned up their image as a host for all kinds of shady stuff, I'd agree more that they have business clients who want the best. Using them has subjected me to mass blocks of IP space by various services. If they're looking to shed customers, this is how you do it.

Did you know Twitter has an open-source arm? This is what it's been up to

Code release before project killed.

It seems like this project has been going forever, and is only now pushing out more than talk. The timing is curious. Get this out into the wild before Musk axes the project to fix twitter's financials? Likely. This is not a profit generator.

Microsoft points at Linux and shouts: Look, look! Privilege-escalation flaws here, too!

What is the actual exposure?

The list of affected systems among distros seems to be fairly limited. And MS disclosed it what, 2 or 3 weeks after disclosing to the author.. is that standard practice for security? I swear I've seen other issues held for months while patches are pushed out. Overall I welcome MS helping to secure Linux distros if they follow standard practices. Everyone benefits from more secure Linux distros.

Alibaba Cloud gets more of Android working on RISC-V silicon

Re: Maybe I am short sighted...

Alicloud is doing a limited test for users of their ARM platform right now. They are exploring multiple architectures. And, as others mentioned.. China is in the process of enforcing rules that move them towards requiring tech developed in China. I don't see a problem with them exploring new architectures.

If you want to talk landfill economy, I just saw an article here about Fedora dropping support for non EUFI systems.

Fedora starts to simplify Linux graphics handling

I actively use nomodeset.

First case is a smaller 4k display. Without nomodeset the console text is tiny and unreadable without bring up a gui I do not often want.

Second case is that I have a situation where I need to ignore the intel igpu and jump into X with an nvidia card. I know there is another solution here, but it is a lot more work.

As for removing support for any computers without UEFI... are we really going to shut out machines that are perfectly functional but happen to not be newish hardware? This totally reminds me of Win11 requiring TPM and forcing older systems into ewaste prematurely.

Heck, if I'm building a qemu VM I don't waste time setting up uefi... it is an unnecessarily complex additional burden. I maybe understand the reasoning, but I disagree with this path.

Putin reaches for nuclear option: Zuckerberg banned

Meta.

No worries, this is the kind of problem the metaverse will solve. Visit virtual russia from your living room...

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

I canceled last quarter.

I saw the price increase coming and evaluated if it was worth it... it was getting a bit pricey. I realized I watch it far less than I used to because the new content is trash. They've shifted focus towards cheaper to make shows and have a habit of canceling shows even though they get great reviews. I think part of that is due to their horrible or skewed recommendation system--this is the company who just added a double thumbs-up button. Get real. Double plus good! Streaming service costs really add up and other services are putting a lot more money into fewer but higher quality content. I don't have time to watch mediocre content. I have other things to do. I was a looong time subscriber. I started with by-mail DVDs. I think they are going to hit some heavy competition. If I want mediocre to poor television for cheap with ads, I'll use traditional cable.

Logitech Lift: Vertical mouse for those with small hands

Frustrating design on the larger model at least.

I tried a lot of stuff before settling on a large trackball for most things. The thing that always bothered me is the middle wheel on the larger version of this. It feels relatively cheap and is poorly positioned for actual use. On an MX Master, the wheel is so much higher quality and the placement can be forgiven as you can back off your grip. The vertical mice, however, seem to be meant to be held in such a way that puts the wheel way up your finger, or not used at all.

MS makes some ergo stuff. They have a sculpt package... the mouse is ok, but i liked the keyboard a lot. It uses an annoying proprietary dongle, but ok. The keyboard had a key fail after about 8 months though and had to be scrapped. I bought another MS ergo model and it was horrible. ymmv.

I use an ugly very ergo keyboard now. I swap between pointing devices and use keyboard only as much as possible. For traditional mice I've found the deltahub carpio to be a nice add-on. For me, at least, it was a lot of testing until I found what worked for me.

FTC sues Intuit for false advertising, says 'free' TurboTax isn't always free

Couldn't happen to a nicer company.

Remember the stories about MailChimp after Intuit acquired them? Years ago they bought another company I dealt with and trashed the product. Intuit has always been shady and misleading. I remember an article that they hid their required free filing site at one point so that you basically had to know the URL to get to it. The IRS site listed alternatives, and I used TaxAct for a few years (not an endorsement) with a much better experience while still being a quite competent product. They are not the only game in town. I use an accountant now that things are slightly complex, and I generally recommend them for year round use. They are useful for financial planning advice if you get one you trust.

Oh, logmein also falls into the category of companies I refuse to do business now due to their shady practices.

Asus GPU prices to tumble by up to 25% as US lifts tariffs

but prices were essentially the same globally.

Ok, I think Asus or some one at least announced these cuts like 2 weeks ago before the news about the tariffs. And it isn't like prices were cheaper outside the US. This reduction in price was global. It does not add up.

Apple's Mac Studio exposed: A spare storage slot and built-in RAM

Why is everyone surprised?

This is exactly in line with every previous M1, and just like everyone said, they put two together with an interconnect that was already spotted before with the max chips, Memory is on chip die because it is also graphics memory and unique to the architecture. Previous configs had the same flash storage layout, just not in a socket. They won't sell many of these, so the socket cuts costs. 0 surprises. The real story is how bad the new display is.

Apple has missed the video revolution

Massive overkill for videoconferencing.

I think if you are buying a green screen for a zoom call you are far outside normal use at that point. The pandemic caused a rush on webcams and for laptop manufacturers to upgrade webcams, but I think apple hardware already had better than normal webcams. So OBS isn't optimized for Macos, that doesn't mean there's a hardware issue. OBS will get optimized one day when there is demand.... and zoom is not driving that. It sounds a lot more like you got bored during the pandemic and spent a lot of money on something you found interesting.

The zero-password future can't come soon enough

Re: "the charge into a passwordless future"

I went to their website expecting some product and didn't find one surprisingly.

A Snapdragon in a ThinkPad: Lenovo unveils the X13s

28hrs of playing local video.

That statistic is so intentionally misleading. I'm guessing it has a dedicated decoder. I don't trust Qualcomm at all, and they've done a horrible job at being competitive. Too hot and too slow. It has hurt Android massively because the hardware just isn't competitive. Otherwise it is nice to see the ram and lenovo styling, but at the current rate of M1 Linux work and prices it would be foolish to buy this Lenovo. Qualcomm is so bad for the ARM ecosystem as a whole. Plus, it looks like in the US the cell capabilities tie it to being sold with a phone plan? No thanks.

What is it with cloud status pages not reflecting reality?

Automated status page..

During the wonderful 2021 winter AWS outages, one was so bad they couldn't update the status page as they did normally and had to find another way. So, automation would be prone to such a situation. That said, yes, status pages are usually useless and one of the last places I hear about an outage.

Tonga's submarine cable reconnects to the world

Expensive.

I new link to diversify from Fiji would be expensive for Tonga. I know a lot of these smaller island nations get their connections at a huge discount as good will. Internal fiber links work, but so does point to point radio at that range. It is often used here, and you rarely notice it.

You should read Section 8 of the Unix User's Manual

Man pages were how I learned unix.

lI remember starting with linux long long ago and just going into /bin /sbin etc and running man * and reading. Taught me so much, then I ran into crontab 5 mentioned, realized there were other man sections and read those. It was great foundational learning. That was always something I respected about OpenBSD--attention to man pages. Too many modern users really don't know how things work or care. To each his own, it fascinated me.

AWS power failure in US-EAST-1 region killed some hardware and instances

Proper failover is great...

But it still tripped up the paging system for a long time. Some of are trying to have Christmas. It wasn't only ec2, we had console access issues as well. And then instances coming back, going away, losing their EBS but being online as EC2... Site up? sure. Pagers quiet? No.

AWS flicks the switch on an Indonesian region

Good to see more regional coverage.

It's great to see more regional coverage. I'd even be happy if AWS just had some edge locations in the area. i wonder if this was a result of demand or just matching competition. Alicloud just opened the first superscalar cloud service in Manila, and hopefully local initiatives will see others come soon as well. Anyway, it is proof that the area is becoming quite hot for tech.

Chinese paper runs interview with Alibaba staffer who claims she was fired after exec rape claim

Change the culture.

This company culture that pushes employees to drink heavily with managers is just something that needs to change. It is far too common, and nothing good comes of it except enjoying some person getting trashed and laughing at them or worse.

ESA's Mars Express picks up plaintive bleeps of China's Zhurong rover, adding much-needed comms redundancy

Re: It's all rather relative with speed

Positive about your baud vs bps? I had saved up for a 14.4kbps modem at that point, but only used it to download package updates when necessary. It started with SLES, I forget when that became stale and Slackware took over. I do remember driving to a college with my large number of 3.5" diskettes to grab the latest versions via their much faster connection. I was in HS, so I just tried to pretend like I belonged in the computer labs while also sticking out because I was loading up discs. If I needed updates, I had to call long distance to some BBS in Sunnyvale--which got me into loads of trouble until an actual ISP arrived. I was recently on vacation and my phone had to fall back on spotty 3G. It was enlightening how many things now expect a reliable high speed connection. I used to have better tools in place for that situation, but didn't know I would need to drag them out for vacation. I was lucky to grow up in that time. I miss some of the challenges faced on slower connections and what it also forced the internet to be. I used to be really into DTN and such. These days I'm attracted to nncpgo and detaching myself from the constant feed of internet.

Singaporean superapp Grab IPOs – badly – and promises to focus on maps and money

Re: GRAB - Another Word for Bad Motorcycle Drivers in VietNam

Vietnam's grab doesn't include driver names/pics/license #s/vehicle decriptions? When I was in Vietnam Vinasun was quite useful, green taxis right? Those I just hailed, but Grab here works more like Uber in that you order it vs hail it.

Re: I have read some fucking shite in my time but

I used Grab 3 times today. This is an app that is very much live and in massive use. Just this week they announced I can use the app to send goods/services to anyone in 200 cities, so I can send friends foods and gifts with immediate delivery. I have the delivery driver's info and can track them on a map. The maps here are already quite good.. they tend to fail in areas where Google also fails. They certainly connect me to restaurants and items I would rarely ever make the trek to go get or even know existed. These are the MSME's they support. It also means I can always get a taxi to get my ass home even in the remotest areas in the earliest hours of the morning, and my driver and GPS are tracked unlike some scary Taxis I have been in. They've boomed during Covid, but in SEA the way we do things now involves these apps and many many more digital transactions. This will not change if Covid disappears. it's a good investment.

Santa's sack is bulging with browsers: Vivaldi 5.0 arrives full of festive cheer

I switched to Vivaldi and I like it quite a bit. There are issues, but ones I can deal with. The translation is neat, especially compared to google's official extension which requires manual intervention for each page.

Beijing wants to level up China's software industry, with an emphasis on FOSS

I found a list of Alibaba OSS software a while back

I don't know much about Chinese software or OSS, but I did run into this list a while back and found it interesting: https://awesomeopensource.com/projects/alibaba

AWS adds Linux app streaming alongside Windows to 'greatly lower' cost

Workspaces.

They have a linux workspaces client, and it works fairly well if you have low latency to AWS. I was able to stream youtube videos at 720p with sound. It costs a bit more that appstream, but it is cool.

Philippines gov takes down passport application website amid privacy leak fears

just the norm.

First, even the link says rappler. rappler.

This is hardly the first major data leaked from ph govt websites. It is essentially an issue of government employees not being paid market rates, like is very common globally. Also, they haven't done some things like just centralize resources on government websites. Most citizens' personal data leaked a while back when voter registration details were exposed. I know the guys running the sites are probably doing their best, but yeah, it is way too common.

As far as the national ID, online registration isn't very widespread. The goal is to get ID to everyone in the country, and a lot of those are old people and not tech literate or just aren't going to do web forms. They are mostly involving local governments to motivate people.

Thinking about it though, I think most of the data you actually give for the passport registration online has already been leaked in hacks of big tech type sites.

Google's Pixel 6 fingerprint reader is rubbish because of 'enhanced security algorithms'

Wrong finger.

Set it up with your middle finger, so at least the failures give you a chance to give feedback to the phone.

A problem with our product? Oh no, that can't be...we mean for it to be like that. That's a bad look for a company. Makes me confident that any support or warranty work is going to be a hassle.

New cable incoming! Hawaiki Nui set to connect Sydney, Singapore, and LA by 2025

Jupiter

Waiting for Jupiter to light up. It will link LA/Oregen to Japan/Philippines with the most direct link from the west coast to SEA. Everything else makes a stop in HK etc, and politics are pushing cables away from HK. ph then has local cable networks to the rest of SEA. This was due to come online at the end of 2020 and has fb and google investment. It's much less bandwidth, but will be great for everyone here. And with Alibaba planning a ph datacenter and the local carrier for Jupiter opening a truly neutral datacenter, hopefully we'll get local fb and google servers. So much stuff for the Philippines is actually 30ms away in Singapore. Diverse routes that skip HK are a national interest to the US now. The pandemic and other pressures have dramatically improved the quality of Philippine internet including massive investments in 5G. What was effectively a telco duopoly has finally given way to competition.

Asia's 'superapps' bundle ride-share, food delivery, even financial services – and they're beating big tech

Uber sold out of SEA because it was losing badly. Grab is just vastly superior. Grab already provided some other services like food delivery before the pandemic, but really improved that experience quickly. It is agile. It provides a virtual Amex for online shopping. It offers courier services. No one uses the lame chat. But, it is a great experience overall. I can order food, talk with the restaurant if what I want isn't available, watch the delivery on a map with road congestion indicators, leave the delivery person a tip and review... It is successful as a "superapp" because Google kind of sucks at finding restaurants. It may collect a lot of data, but isn't Google accused of the same thing? Etc. It was not the result of some authoritarian regime and isn't evil any more than the other tech giants who harvest data. It is the product of capitalism.

The other major "superapp" here would be GCash. Made by the fintech arm of a local Telco. It is basically the digital currency. It is easy to get money in and out, you can buy cellular load, pay bills, load up your Grab account. It has insurance, but the conditions make it useless. Maybe Venmo in the US comes sort of close, but is nowhere near as prevalent in day to day life. When Covid aid needed distribution, a local government was able to distribute over half of the funds in less than a day by sending directly to GCash accounts. Again, it is the product of capitalism and not some government scheme. The Philippine government has actually taken a stance against getting involved in digital currencies right now. There was some past exploration years ago, but it went nowhere. They are instead focused on specific targets like banking the unbanked by lowering barriers.

Lazada and Shopee blew up in the pandemic, but are just online marketplaces (where you can pay with GCash). In that way, the mention of Grab as a superapp is really wrong. You don't live in it, but they do offer multiple services generally based around moving things or people. There are differences from the west in that there's less segmentation or real competition to each app, but that isn't really what made them a success. They were successful because they provided very good products and they were developed for people who only had a phone. The apps are some of the best I have ever seen and are handling highly complex tasks. Am I really supposed to compare GCash to Google Pay? For Grab, I think Uber and everyone are all basically copying the innovation of others as time goes on. For Lazada and Shopee, they filled holes in available services, You can't forget how often products are not available outside of a few select countries. Ebay and others specifically excluded themselves from these markets and so they aren't a thing here. Apple is a huge product here because they sell here. Why is Google only selling phones in 13 countries? Apple makes luxury products, while Google has been aiming at the mid-end market, and yet they don't even sell where that would be successful.

I can pay a doctor with GCash, do a videocall with Meet or Zoom or Facetime, get prescriptions or test requests. I can have the tests done get results back digitally to send back to the doctor. When I go to do the tests I can call a car with Grab or scan a QR code for payment with GCash in the back of a taxi--contactless transactions. And I can do this without a bank account. There's no WeChat or Kakao here, but there are strong local or regional products taht have grown where the biggest tech companies refuse to do business. These smaller companies are interesting in that they expose that there is plenty of profit to be made here, and because in many cases they provide superior products to those offered by the biggest tech companies.

I could go on, but I essentially think this article does not understand what it is talking about.